“The Rock is My Foundation”
As part of the duo Indigo Girls, Amy Ray has already made an indelible mark in the music world. And while the partnership with Emily Saliers expanded from the original union of two voices and two acoustic guitars, she still has more to say creatively.
Starting with 2001’s Stag, Ray has released six solo albums including her latest, Lung of Love, on her Daemon Records label. The album presents 10 sharply-written tracks that supply one pleasurable surprise after another, from pure pop moments to distorted guitar rave-ups and Appalachian gospel.
On the album she not only reunites with Greg Griffith, producer of her last solo effort, 2008’s Didn’t It Feel Kinder but takes matters a step further by co-writing five tracks with him. Despite nearly 30 years with Saliers, it’s the first time she’s collaborated on songs.
Using her touring band gave the material a crisp sense of urgency while keyboard overdubs and guest vocalists Jim James, Brandi Carlile and Lindsay Fuller produced a fuller sound.
As far as how the album title fits within Ray’s status as an artist, she explained that while on the road the idea of the lung, not the heart, became the inspiration as the focal point of love. “I have a compass — morally, physically — and I am pulled in different directions. I was thinking about how these opposite urges create stress and clumsiness in our lives.
“The lung of love is my singing voice. That is what comes out of me, but always in a struggle with its own clumsiness and frailty.”
JPG: Just about everything I read about you you’re always referred to as the punk side of Indigo Girls. I listen to your music and you’re more rock ‘n’ roll than Emily Saliers and a lot of the bands that you’re into — the Clash and the Replacements were punks and stuff like that — but the music that you’re producing isn’t really punk rock in its typical sense. Do you ever get sick of that description?
AR: Well, for me it’s the part that can be accurate because of what I’m influenced by probably and, obviously, there are a lot of songs that aren’t that. There’s a few songs that are. On this new record there’s a song like “From Haiti,” kind of influenced by Chumbawumba and the Clash and Patti Smith and stuff. But it doesn’t go in that direction as much as something like [the album] “Stag” would have or maybe some of the songs on “Didn’t It Feel Kinder.”
I think people that see the show see it that way too because I’m playing songs from every record. I’m drawn from a lot of the harder edge stuff. It’s a real rock show, you know? It feels that way, and you can feel that’s why that reference is there because of the energy that is in it.
What’s the most important part of that [punk] movement for me is the philosophy of it, the DIY part, what Fugazi did and what Ian [MacKaye ]did and in DC; those different scenes in different cities that really showed a way to play your music and not have boundaries, to get past the gatekeepers by building your own infrastructures.
JPG: You saying that reminds me of this. Have you read Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life ?
AR: Yes. I love that book.
JPG: So do I. You made me think of it when you mentioned Fugazi. The one song on the album that I would say is closest to punk in sound — you mentioned “From Haiti” – is “Give It A Go.” It reminds me of a Sugar/Bob Mould song with the treated vocals as well.
AR: Who I love. (laughs) Bob Mould definitely influenced me a lot. Songwriting, too. Melodically, he’s so great. I recorded the demo on my phone. The only thing I had with me and I was riding. The song came out. My friend Greg [Griffith] who was working with me on the record said, “I like the way that sounds. We should just record it through a video camera microphone.” That’s what we did to tape. As far as vocals and guitar and the drums were on regular mics to tape, so it gave it that grungier, desperate feel.
JPG: I didn’t know if it used an effect after you did the vocals or you were singing in some beat up microphone.
AR: Yeah, we used the video camera mic and we used a good mic too, together. It’s live that one, kind of a one shot deal.
JPG: I’d like to run through the new album. Lung of Love is infectiously, accessible. Maybe that’s why I kind of bristle a little bit when the punk label comes up because the songs are really quite poppy in places — “Glow A Little” and “Revolution,” stuff like that. Although there’s other influences going on such as Appalachian gospel on “The Rock is My Foundation.” Was it your intention to make something that sounded poppy with really, really tight and melodic songs.
AR: Actually, it was. I didn’t want to lose energy but I wanted to tighten up everything, and I wanted to pitch to a melody, more specifically, and how the chords worked underneath itself. Working with Greg as producer — he co-wrote some things with me, too — I knew it would go in that direction because that’s really his emphasis as a producer and as a musical being, that pop sensibility. And I wanted that for this record. I wanted to focus real hard and make everything really tight. I knew I could always go back and do another record where everything sounds like Indigo Girls. (laughs)
It’s harder for me to do something where I have a “Glow” and a “Little Revolution” on there. When you’re going to go with two existing in the same space, which I thought it would be an interesting challenge. And Greg’s definitely one who can do that path.
JPG: On the other hand, I read about how you needed to get used to working with Greg on the last album because of his ideas of what to do, and at first you thought he wasn’t respecting you.
AR: Yes.
JPG: How did it come from that to him being your first co-songwriter?
AR: We just have a special relationship and we went through that transition together. I just got over that and we learned how to relate to each other. We have a way to work together, which really works. I dropped any need I had to feel, I guess, not respected but validated. It’s like I had a need to be validated in some way that probably wasn’t relevant to the experience.
Honestly, you know, some of that’s immaturity. Some of that is evolution of a relationship. Some relationships are hard fought. I think ours is. We had to grow through it together, fight like brother and sister in a way. We came out on the other side and we really wanted to create together still. I love what he does. It’s worth it to me to fight for that relationship when I think it is someone that is so musically gifted.
JPG: Putting together material for Lung of Love, it always reminds me of this when someone does a solo project. I always think back of one of my heroes, Pete Townshend talking about how he’d write songs and then put an amount to the side because they sounded like Who songs that Roger could sing. Then, write some more and put those to the other side because they sounded like solo material. How do you approach that balance from what is on an Amy Ray album versus what you bring to Emily [Saliers] for an Indigo Girls album?
AR: It’s the same kind of thing. When I’ve started a song, I can hear Emily in my head a little bit. If it’s an Indigo Girl’s song, I can imagine harmonies, what we would do to it as collaborators. If it’s a solo song, I’ll hear Melissa York’s drumming or I’ll hear what Kaia [Wilson] will do on the guitar. What would Greg play? It’s really a collaboration, where I know the different people I play with.
The way I record solo is different. The way Emily and I work is different. So it’s just instinct and it’s still the desire. I really want this to be an Indigo Girls song. I want to do this big harmony duo treatment to it. I do a lot of harmonies with my solos but they’re backing harmonies whereas Indigo Girls we’re doing countermelodies and the voices are equally important to each other. There’s a total different arrangement. I feel and I just know it in my gut.
There’s another pile that’s like the “I-don’t-know-what-I’m-going-to-do-about-this-put-this-in-another-pile.
JPG: You made me just think of this. As far as the harmonies, so many people, especially when it’s a duo singing, there’s always talk of the Everly Brothers. Was that something between you two as well or you didn’t even think about any other artists that were doing harmonies?
AR: When we started out, we were in high school singing together. We were like 16. The Everly Brothers weren’t really on our radar the way they would be now, for me for instance, ‘cause now I listen to them all the time. And I have this massive appreciation for those songs, actually, and the way they built those harmonies or whoever arranged them did. For me and Emily, Simon & Garfunkel were and the Roches. We were both in choir where you sing a lot of countermelodies, sort of waterfalling over each other. Things happen.
So, those we had and some of it was our weaknesses, couldn’t really sing harmony that well. I couldn’t write harmony at all. Now I can; something that I’ve really worked on. I would just have to pretend that it’s a melody. Our style, that we were actually singing two melodies, was a very Simon & Garfunkel thing to do. That would have been more of an influence in our very early days. That’s when we were 16, just starting out.
JPG: Going back to the new album, I wanted to touch on a couple of songs. We mentioned “From Haiti” earlier. When you were writing that did you have to work to make it from, based on the title, a commentary on the sad situation there into what it became — a rebellious, “we’re not to be pitied” number?
AR: It wasn’t hard for me to think of it that way because I had been thinking about the history of Haiti and how it’s a lot that they have been through and that patronizing relationship that we have had with them over the years. Then, I saw this group of photos that this photographer Jeremy Cowart took. He went down there and he took a bunch of photos. He sold them and he gave the money to different organizations there.
I was online looking at his photos and they were very strong; people rising above. I started that song from that perspective, of them talking to us, telling us what we need to hear. It wasn’t very hard for me to sit in that place because I had those photos that I had seen in my head, just listening to what they had to say about their situation over the years and what they had kind of overcome. Corruption aside, all that stuff that we highlighted in America in the news, just the pure spirit of the people.
We’re so young, this government and country in some ways, spoiled in some ways. I think there are other things we can learn. I was just thinking about that.
JPG: Speaking of learning, the song “Little Revolution” and its ah-ha moment of learning from letting in the pain. Is that what it was for you and have you stuck to it and helped you in life?
AR: Yeah. I think one of those ah-ha moments for me was a long time ago in the mid-‘90s. I went down to southern Mexico. We were funding a project for the Zapatistas. I was down there for like five days; hard stuff to see. And I just had to get through the moment of facing the people, the sick animals, the sick people, the war planes, just everything that’s going on. You can’t get anything done unless you can see this first and go past that to the next place, which is to try to do something.
It’s like something as simple as when you are a kid and you see a sick dog or a sick cat by the side of the road you either look the other way and keep driving or you stop and deal with ‘em. How horrible that situation is. That’s like the bottom and the other side would be the human beings. I’ve seen that. So, I’m tempted to turn away. The fact that I’ve learned it and I don’t. Ultimately, I don’t feel better but I feel more engaged, more connected.
JPG: Even if the end result isn’t as you would like, at least you tried and brought it to a conclusion.
AR: Yeah, exactly.
JPG: I was reading one of the reviews of Lung of Love. I think it was on PopMatters.com.
AR: Oh God. It’s probably a bad review.
JPG: Well…the funny thing is, being a Clash fan and having played “Eve of Destruction” hundreds of times and other matters, to me, I have no problems with politics mixed with music. This person liked the album a lot but then he said, “When the songs steps into political territory I can’t help but quiver.” And it goes from there.
AR: He may not like the way I do it.
JPG: I think he doesn’t like politics in music at all.
AR: It’s his thing.
JPG: Yes, but throughout your entire career, you’ve been an activist, you’ve done benefits. Things like that. Why do you think it’s important to keep politics with music while catching criticism for doing that and with the world not changed to a utopian society when the lights came on at the new millennium, how do you remain encouraged to keep doing that?
AR: I think you have to write from a place that’s honest. Some of those songs are going to be political. If you think to yourself, “I’m not going to do this because it’s a political song,” you’re editing in a way that’s, I don’t think, appropriate. I don’t set out to write a certain percentage of political music. I think it’s important. My life is politicized. I see things through that lens. I can’t help it. With the activists that I know and the things that I know that go on and things that I’ve done or have been part of, if those weren’t anywhere in my writing then it would mean that I wasn’t expressing part of myself.
As a writer, you just need to go there and express your honest self and then work on the craft of it. It’s good to get it all out and then craft it. You can take all of those songs out if you want. There’s going to be criticism if you don’t do ‘em and there’s criticism if you do. I think also, sometimes, as a woman artist and a gay artist, it’s seen almost as being too emotive or something. There’s a different barometer that I would be measured by than someone like Rage Against the Machine because it’s the nature of the kind of music that I play and me being female and all that stuff. I learned early on I couldn’t worry about that. I had to do my thing. When Zach [de la Rocha] sings about politics, it’s going to sound one way to somebody and when I do it, it’ll sound another way. (laughs)
It’s okay with me because it’s just the way the world is. We’re changing slowly. You have to write. You have to be honest. I don’ feel like it’s subjective. There’s certainly records that are much praised and I don’t think they’re that great or vice versa.
“Little Revolution”
JPG: We both grew up in a time where songs that dealt with politics were hits. CSNY with “Ohio.” That stuff was around in the ‘60s, ‘70s and even the ‘80s, and with rap in the ‘80s and a portion of the ‘90s. Why do you think it’s changed in the 21st century? Is it just an end result of build up to the Iraq War and any dissent was struck down as hating America so artists are afraid now and advised not to do that or do you think that was just happening naturally anyways?
AR: That’s a good question. I don’t really know. You get the sense that it wasn’t like one thing that shut it down but it’s like this tendency for artists and managers and labels to have this sense they need to please everybody and not rock the boat too much. What happens is it distills down to this very vanilla thing because people are afraid to make a stand one way or the other in their music. I think it’s just like the industry and not just the music industry but every industry.
In one sense we’re so polarized from each other, we can’t even have a dialogue about our differences without fighting and having a terrible congress that can’t settle on anything or see beyond everything being so political.
But on the other hand, trying to take the middle all the time where does that get you? It would be better if we could have an honest — everybody could just stand where they stand — but we could respect each other for it, too. Respect our differences.
The musicians, they felt their careers were so on the line all the time. It became about money and also at the same time, trust started to get really jaded because there were celebrities getting political and it started to feel like they were exploiting them. When you put it all together it made us sort of fearful and vanilla in a way. There are people still doing things and making stands. Obviously, we have great underground tools in the Internet, Internet Radio and Indie Media. It’s really alive and kickin’. That’s sort of our subset where we sit. Underground. To get to that other place, if I want to get there, I can’t say this and this and this. Well, what’s the point, right? That’s how I feel but then you have really big artists like Springsteen that he says whatever he wants to say. He has really strong opinions. Once you get to a certain place, you can. Thank God.
JPG: Yes, but I think of how the Dixie Chicks were shut down or Linda Ronstadt was hassled for tiny little comments.
AR: The country industry, you’re brave if you say something in that industry because that’s pretty strict.
JPG: A lot of country is quite vanilla anyways. Have you and you and/or you and Emily, had to face that type of situation? Is that why you’re not recording for Sony and being on Dancing with the Stars and all that?
AR: our contract was up with Sony and we felt like we had outlived our place there. Our relationship had gotten to the place where I think they didn’t want to keep putting our records out and we didn’t want to keep being on the label. At that point I just felt like I don’t want to do this corporate thing anymore ‘cause part of it rubbed me the wrong the way but at the same time we got a lot out of it. They did a lot towards our act, believe it or not. They never told us what to do or anything. We were in our own little world there. We got lucky. It came at a time when Oasis was on that label and Pearl Jam. We had a lot of good labelmates, actually. Joan Jett was even on that label for awhile. We knew our time was up and we wanted to do our own thing and we tried a smaller label for awhile and we’re like, “That’s not working either, so let’s just do our own thing.”
JPG: What label are you on now? I know you were on Vanguard at one time.
AR: It’s Indigo Recordings, but we go through Vanguard.
JPG: Was it ever a consideration to put Indigo Girls records out on your label, Daemon Records?
AR: No. I think it was too much of a conflict probably. It would be hard for Emily if I was the president of our label (laughs) ‘cause then what if she has a beef and she has to come to me and talk to me about it?
JPG: Last thing, again from your many years of being an activist and doing benefits and working towards positive solutions, are you encouraged by the Occupy Wall Street movement, social media making people aware, online petitions…?
AR: I think the Occupy Movements are good. There are certain ones that stick out for me. DC has, along with the Occupy Movement, proposed an economic plan as well, which is interesting. I don’t know if they’ve come out with it publicly. Somebody sent it to me and I thought it was pretty cool. It’s interesting when there’s an Occupy Movement and then there’s a subset of that that comes up with some concrete analysis and plan to put forward to the people and to Congress and say, “Pay attention to this.” Honestly, it would be hard to get them to pay attention to it but it’s a good thing to do because eventually I think it’ll get through.
That movement is important because it is all-empowering and we need to feel empowered. I think Social Media is important even though it’s a very crowded space now. And it’s very crowded with people advertising their shows or whatever, like I do (slight laugh), all the things that are promotional, which I am thinking a lot about. How much of that should you be doing? Should that space be crowded with that? Do we want that space to be for activists? But you can’t control it. That’s the whole point of it. I love it. I love what it’s given us. It’s a challenge, and every new thing that comes up to help your activism is also a challenge because it’s a tool and you have to figure out how to use it the right way and how to not have it co-opted etc. etc.
I can be pretty cynical but I’m also an incredibly positive person. I always feel like it’s worth the trouble to try to do things and to engage and to fight for things ‘cause I feel like if you don’t then you really lose all your footing and everything just goes down the tubes. So, even if you don’t see that you’re winning this huge paradigm shift that you want to win, you’re probably winning little things here and there at local battles that are really important and improving the quality of life for a certain number of people and that’s worth it.
JPG: That’s a very inspiring way to end this. It’s inspiring for me ‘cause I could use a pep talk every so often.
AR: We all do sometimes.
